AGATA SŁOWAK
Polish artist Agata Słowak paints dense and allegorical tableaus that speak on the intersection of public policy and religion, critiquing the oppressive legislations against women and queer folk.
Life
Agata Słowak was born in 1994 in Busko, Poland. The artist studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Słowak received first prize in the Polityka Passport Award for Visual Arts in 2022 and the Kompas Młodej Sztuki in 2023.
Agata Słowak Artworks
Słowak has drawn upon her upbringing in conservative Busko and life under the right-wing government (2015–2023) to critique and explore the cultural landscapes of Poland. Her paintings, often showing herself with allegorical yet intimate imagery, reference early modern and modernist paintings.
Słowak has said that she wants to ’queer Jesus’ in her work. References to religious iconography frequently appear in her paintings alongside the intense and chilling imagery of blood, nails, phallus, and gore. In Autoportret Z Krzyżowaniem Spermy I Krwi (Self-Portrait With Sperm And Blood Crossing) (2023), blood gushes from the stigmata on Słowak’s raised right hand. A man ejaculates on her from the upper-left corner of the canvas, his semen crossing paths with her blood. There’s a Fckn Goats Outside (2023) shows Słowak embracing a lamb amidst a meadow littered with goats standing on their hind legs. In biblical texts, sheep symbolise God’s people while goats are associated with evil.
Through her practice, Słowak confronts the oppressive policies enacted on women and queer folk in Poland, especially with regards to reproductive rights. Many of her works depict nude women, who are pregnant, in pain, violent, or still. In Łabędzi Śpiew (Swansong) (2022), two nude women embrace in the forest while a wounded man lies on the grass. A swan pecks at the man’s groin. In another work, Pusta dziewczyna / Empty Girl (2022), a morose-looking woman holds a nude woman in her arms, whose abdomen has been split open.
Exhibitions
Agata Słowak has held solo exhibitions at the Fortnight Institute, New York, and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the European Arteast Foundation, London; Vacancy Gallery, Shanghai; Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia.
Agata Słowak’s Instagram can be found here.
Arianna Mercado | Ocula | 2024
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